Art in an Octagon: The Schinkel Pavilion Berlin

The Schinkel Pavilon in Berlin-Mitte is perhaps Germany?s most unconventional art association. Where GDR nomenklatura once held cocktail parties, now Douglas Gordon, Cyprien Gaillard and Isa Genzken hold exhibitions. ... more

26/11/2010

From the Feuilletons

From the Feuilletons is a weekly overview of what's been happening in the German-language cultural pages and appears every Friday at 3 pm. CET.. Here a key to the German newspapers.

Reactions of the papers to "The Coming Insurrection"

Die Tageszeitung 23.11.2010

"The Coming Insurrection", an anti-globalisation manifesto by a French anarchist group calling themselves "The Invisible Committee" caused quite a stir when it was published in France and the US last year (where it was published by Semiotexte â read English version here). It has finally been translated into German and had had surprisingly warm reviews in two of Germany's leading broadsheets, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (here) and the Süddeutche Zeitung (here). In the left-wing paper taz, however, Johannes Thumfart describes the pamphlet, as decidedly right-wing: "The pamphlet explicitly calls for political acts of violence, to 'liberate territory from police occupation'. Democracy is the authors' sworn enemy. The post-war era is tersely described as 'sixty years of pacification, sixty years of democratic anaesthesia'; and anyone who insists on 'the democratic character of decision making' is a 'fanatic of process'. In the 'bourgeois parliaments', there is nothing but 'palaver' â which immediately calls to mind the situation in the Weimar Republic when extremists on the left and right described the Reichstag as a 'schwatzbude' or chattering-shop. The authors summon up Carl Schmitt, the 'crown jurist' of the Third Reich, and his ideas on the "state of emergency', 'partisans' and the concept of the political. Another influence is the philosopher Martin Heidegger, whose ideas served the Nazis well. In particular the book is inspired by Heidegger's ideas on technology and modernism". Thumfart adds: "FAZ and SZ were so enthusiastic in their reviews of the pamphlet that that one Berlin book shop felt obliged to send out an ironic circular mail saying that the leading German dailies were now actively calling for terrorism."

On 25.11.2010, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the Süddeutsche Zeitung both responded to Johannes Thumfart's accusations in the taz.

In the FAZ Jürgen Kaube argues that the pamphlet is neither left nor right but "youth literature" that demands to be taken seriously. "It makes no sense to discuss whether this theory stems from the far-left or far-right, as the booklet's anti-modern affects are currently leading people to do. Because the motifs of cultural criticism have long been blurred. The 'Invisible Committee' does not cite Heidegger and Carl Schmitt; this is merely a Rorschach reading by the taz â and has no bearing on any political position."

In the SZ, Marc Felix Serrao does see traces of conservative revolution in the pamphlet and an affinity with Ernst Jünger's "Waldgang" [an essay on the individual's choices of resistance against an oppressive society -ed.]. But he thinks it wrong to "dismiss it as anti-modern simply by pointing to its role models. Because what do children care about their intellectual fathers? What once might have been genuine disgust at the world is now firmly ensconced in mainstream pop culture. (...) It is the acerbic tone of 'The Coming Insurrection' which makes it so impressive. The description of the wasteland is shared by every politically interested individual, if they are not completely cynical about the state of things."

Other stories of the week

Frankfurter Rundschau 22.11.2010

In Peter Michalzik's comparison of two stagings of Roland Shimmelpfennig's new play "Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God", Martin Kusej's version at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin fares better than Wilfried Mink's at the Hamburg Thalia. The play itself, which The Africa Trilogy neatly dubs a sort of "post-colonial 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf'", takes place during a boozy reunion dinner party of two couples, all four of them medics. One couple have just returned from working in Africa under difficult conditions, fleeing in fear of their lives; the others opted for the easy life. "In Hamburg it soon became clear that that 'Peggy Pickit' is an intelligent theatre parable, if played as comedy. Four people provide four answers to the scandal of African misery, and none of them are solutions. ... Roland Schimmelpfennig is a postmoralist author and a strong voice of a generation that is sceptical about itself more than anything else. It is a generation which, if you want to be unkind, wants a clear conscience even as feelgood home-owners. Or, if you want to be kind, has never given up trying to make the world a better place. 'Peggy Pickit' stands up to moral uncertainty and gives no false answers."

Frankfurter Rundschau 23.11.2010

Christian Thomas wandered in awe through the huge exhibition on the Celts in the Völklingen Ironworks. At the end, though, he still had some unanswered questions: "There was no word about the Celts' love of gruesome rituals, and of human sacrifice in particular. All the helmets, round, conical, iron and bronze, say no more about the Celtic cult of decapitation than the 2,800 year-old razor blades, torques, or spindly spiral-headed needles."

Süddeutsche Zeitung 23.11.2010

Suicide rates in Lithuania are four times as high as in Germany, reports Cathrin Kahlweit. The reasons hark back to the country's communist past. The rock star Andrius Mamontovas (singing here) is deeply committed to improving thing but there is a long way to go yet: "The suicide hotline in the capital Vilnius takes 100,000 calls a year, 24 hours a day, seven day a week but it is not enough. Two million calls come in every year, and sometimes people have to try 30 times before they get through."

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 24.11.2010

Prompted by the closure of the TV show fronted by Russian journalist Anna Urmanzeva, Kerstin Holm reports on a string of recent hair-raising cases where critical journalism has been silenced by force in Russia. Urmanzeva broadcast a story on the abuse of orphan children in psychiatric clinics: "Russian psychiatry is deliberately producing 'human vegetables' the journalist reported in her programme on the Moscow channel TVZ. Children in care who complete their school studies are eligible for state housing â but not if they are hopeless cases. On top of this, their invalid benefits are automatically transferred to their carers."

Die Tageszeitung 26.11.2010

Jürgen Gottschlich reports that the literary Nobel Prize laureate V.S.Naipaul, who was due to give the opening speech at the "European Writers' Parliament" in Istanbul, cancelled after a heated debate blew up about his alleged vilification of Islam. The secular publisher Ragip Zarakolu comments: "If things continue this way, it won't be long before we can't invite anyone from outside the Islamic world."

Saturday 11 - 17 December, 2010

A clutch of German newspapers launch an appeal against the criminalisation of Wikileaks. Vera Lengsfeld remembers GDR dissident Jürgen Fuchs and how he met death in his cell. All the papers were bowled over Xavier Beauvois' film "Of Gods and Men." The FR enjoys a joke but not a picnic at a staging of Stravinsky's "Rake's Progress" in Berlin. Gustav Seibt provides a lurid description of Napoleonic soap in the SZ. German-Turkish Dogan Akhanli author explains what it feels like to be Josef K. read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 December

Colombian writer Hector Abad defends Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa against European Latin-America romantics. Wikileaks dissident Daniel Domscheit-Berg criticises the new publication policy of his former employer. The Sprengel Museum has put on a show of child nudes by die Brücke artists. The SZ takes a walk through the Internet woods with FAZ prophet of doom Frank Schirrmacher. The FAZ is troubled by Christian Thielemann's unstable tempo in the Beethoven cycle. And the FR meets China Free Press publisher, Bao Pu.read more

Saturday 27 November - Friday 3 December

Danish author Frederik Stjernfelt explains how the Left got its culturist ideas. Slavenka Draculic writes about censoring Angelina Jolie who wanted to make a film in Bosnia. Daniel Cohn-Bendit talksÂ Â about his friendship, falling out and reconciliation with Jean-Luc Godard. Wikileaks has caused an embarrassed silence in the Arab world, where not even al-Jazeera reported on the what the sheiks really think. Alan Posener calls for the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden to be shut down.read more

Saturday 13 - Friday 19 November, 2010

Dieter Schlesak levels grave accusations against his former friend and colleague, Oskar Pastior, who spied on him for the Securitate. Banat-Swabian author and vice chairman of the Oskar Pastior Foundation, Ernest Wichner, turns on Schlesak for spreading malicious rumours. Die Zeit portrays the Berlin rapper Harris, and the moment he knew he was German. Dutch author Cees Nooteboom meditates on the near lust for physical torture in the paintings of Francisco de Zurburan. An exhibition in Mannheim displays the dream house photography of Julius Schulman.read more

Saturday 6 - Friday 12 November, 2010

The NZZ asks why banks invest in art. The FAZ gawps at the unnatural stack of stomach muscles in Michelangelo's drawings. The taz witnesses a giant step for the "Yugo palaver". Bernard-Henri Levy describes Sakineh Ashtiani's impending execution as a test for Iran and the west.Journalist Michael Anti talks about the healthy relationship between the net and the Chinese media. Literary academic Helmut Lethen describes how Ernst Jünger stripped the worker of all organic substances.read more

Saturday 30 October - Friday 5 November, 2010

Now that German TV has just beatifiedPope Pius XII, Rolf Hochmuth tells die Welt where he got the idea for his play "The Deputy". The FR celebrates Elfriede Jelinek's "brilliantly malicious" farce about the collapse of the Cologne City Archive. "Carlos" director Olivier Assayas makes it clear that the revolutionary subject is a figment of the imagination. The SZ returns from the Shanghai Expo with a cloying after-taste of sweet 'n' sour. And historian Wang Hui tells the NZZ that China's intellectuals have plenty of freedom to pose critical questions.read more

Saturday 23 - Friday 29 October, 2010

Author Doron Rabinovici protests against the concessions of moderate Austrian politicians to the FPÖ: recently in Vienna, children were sent back to Kosovo at gunpoint. Ian McEwan wonders why major German novelists didn't mention the Wall. The NZZ looks through the Priz Goncourt shortlist and finds plenty of writers with more bite than Houellebecq. The FAZ outs two of Germany's leading journalists who fiercely guarded the German Foreign Ministry's Nazi past. Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt analyse the symptoms of culturalism, left and right. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht demonstratively yawns at German debate.read more

Saturday 16 - Friday 22 October, 2010

A new book chronicles the revolt of revolting "third persons" at Suhrkamp publishers in the wild days of 1968. Necla Kelek is appalled by the speech of the very Christian Christian Wulff, the German president, in Turkey. The taz met a new faction of hardcore Palestinians who are fighting for separate sex hairdressing in Gaza. Sinologist Andreas Schlieker reports on the new Chinese willingness to restructure the heart. And the Cologne band Erdmöbel celebrate the famous halo around the frying pan.read more

Saturday 9 - Friday 15 October, 2010

The FR laps up the muscular male bodies and bellies at the Michelangelo exhibition in the Viennese Albertina. The same paper is outraged by the cowardice of the Berlin exhibition "Hitler and the Germans". Mario Vargas-Llosa remembers a bad line from Sweden. Theologist Friedrich Wilhelm Graf makes it very clear that Western values are not Judaeo-Christian values. The Achse des Guten is annoyed by the attempts of the mainstream media to dismiss Mario Vargas-Llosa. The NZZ celebrates the tireless self-demolition of Polish writer and satirist Slawomir Mrozek.read more

Saturday 2 - Friday 8 October, 2010

Nigerian writer Niyi Osundare explains why his country has become uninhabitable. German Book Prize winner Melinda Nadj Abonji says Switzerland only pretends to be liberal. German author Monika Maron is not surethat Islam really does belong to Germany. Russian writer Oleg Yuriev explains the disastrous effects of postmodernism on the Petersburg Hermitage. Argentinian author Martin Caparros describes how the Kirchners have co-opted the country's revolutionary history. And publisher Damian Tabarovsky explains why 2001 was such an explosively creative year for Argentina.read more

Saturday 25 September - Friday 1 October

Three East German theatre directors talk about the trauma of reunification. In the FAZ, Thilo Sarrazin denies accusations that his book propagates eugenics: "I am interested in the interplay of nature and nurture." Polemics are being drowned out by blaring lullabies, author Thea Dorn despairs. Author Iris Radisch is dismayed by the state of the German novel - too much idle chatter, not enough literary clout. Der Spiegel posts its interview with the German WikiLeaks spokesman, Daniel Schmitt. And Vaclav Havel's appeal to award the Nobel prize to Liu Xiabobo has the Chinese authorities pulling out their hair.read more

Saturday 18 - Friday 24 September, 2010

Herta Müller's response to the news that poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant was one of overwhelming grief: "When he returned home from the gulag he was everybody's game." Theatre director Luk Perceval talks about the veiled depression in his theatre. Cartoonist Molly Norris has disappeared after receiving death threats for her "Everybody Draw Mohammed" campaign. The Berliner Zeitung approves of the mellowing in Pierre Boulez' music. And Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, allowed to leave China for the first time, explains why schnapps is his most important writing tool.read more

Saturday 10 - Friday 17 September, 2010

The poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant, the historian Stefan Sienerth has discovered. Biologist Veronika Lipphardt dismisses Thilo Sarrazin'sincendiary intelligence theories as a load of codswallop. A number of prominent Muslim intellectuals in Germany have written an open letter to President Christian Wulff, calling for him to "make a stand for a democratic culture based on mutual respect." And a Shell study has revealed that Germany's youth aspire to be just like their parents.read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 September, 2010

Thilo Sarrazin has buckled under the stress of the past two weeks and resigned from the board of the Central Bank. His book, "Germany is abolishing itself", however, continues to keep Germany locked in a debate about education and immigration and intelligence. Also this week, Mohammed cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has been awarded the M100 prize for defending freedom of opinion. Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a speech at the award ceremony: "The secret of freedom is courage". The FAZ interviewed Westergaard, who expressed his disappointment that the only people who had shown him no support were those of his own class. read more